Let me piggyback on that, because, Aubrey, you're talking about dealing
with the emotional side. You actually reference the spiritual formation
process, if you will -- that's not the best term to use, but Andy,
could you talk about that just for a minute? Because it really relates
to what you're talking about.

That's one of the ways that we're trying to address that here at the
seminary with our students. But there is such a need for it to go
beyond just here. And we're working with churches now, and you both, in
organizations that you relate with, are doing that on a regular basis,
and in seeing that dynamic of spiritual formation as it is helping to
identify these emotional issues that will help prepare someone to be a
better leader.

You want to talk about that as it relates to spiritual formation?

Dr. Andy
Seidel:Spiritual formation,
people talk about it from a lot of perspectives. Sometimes they talk
about it just in terms of spiritual disciplines or somehow spiritual
growth. We've really taken a little bit different tack on that.

While we include those things, our view is that spiritual formation
really has to do with understanding yourself and relationship to God
and allowing God to work in your life. And inviting Him to do that and
really working through that process.

We talk about a number of critical things in spiritual formation, first
of which is identity, and that's why we think it's so critical as a
foundation for leadership that our identity is grounded in our
relationship with Christ, our acceptance by Christ, our gifting by
Christ, all of those things that God has done for us. And providing us
with that one relationship in which we can be absolutely secure, so
that we don't have to try to establish identity for ourselves.

We can serve others by the way that we lead.

And we talk about integrity, because integrity is a critical thing, and
by integrity we're talking about more than just being honest on the
outside, we're talking about being honest on the inside. And
understanding what's going on, it's related in some way to what Aubrey
was talking about in terms of understanding what's going on in your own
life, emotions being a part of that.

But understanding your own weaknesses. One of the things
that we do in that semester is students write a Screwtape letter about
themselves. "How would I be best tempted?" And it's really a process of
understanding what's going on inside, you know, where our weaknesses
are.

And so we talk about those things. We also talk about communication. We
talk, later on, about ministry. We talk about community, a major issue,
because we really believe that life change happens in the context of
community.

Not by yourself, but in the context of a community of people that can
speak into your life, people that know you, that you allow to know you,
and God uses those things to develop us spiritually.

Mark:
That's great. Thanks for covering that.

Andy:
You bet.

Dr. Aubrey Malphurs:I can
imagine that
some in the listening audience are sitting and thinking, saying, "This
is fine for seminary students, this is really going to make a
difference in pastors in the future, but how can we take advantage of
this..."

Andy:
"What can we do now?"

Aubrey:..."In our church --
and I'm
not going to be a pastor, I don't plan to be a pastor, I plan to be
more of a..." I hate this term, "'lay leader', but I plan to be a
leader
in the church." But I don't see any reason why the typical person in
the church, typical believer, could not become involved in this.

I'm not trying to do a sales job on anyone here, but isn't some of this
information available to the public? Can they not get a hold of it?

Andy:Yes.
Actually, the curriculum
has been reworked for use in the local church, and so they can get a
hold of it through the Center for Christian Leadership at the web
address...

Aubrey:And you could take
this in a
church, especially if you have a small group approach to ministry, and
that would be very powerful material for a small group to work through
together.

So if any out in the listening audience are saying, "How can we get a
hold of this?" or "How can we do this?" there's the answer. This
material is available, and I'm sure there are other materials out on
the market as well.

So they can avail themselves to it.

Mark:
That is great.

Well, let's take the flip side of this. We've asked questions of
qualities of effective leaders. What are some of the pitfalls and
dangers of many church leaders today?

Again, Aubrey, let me start with you. In terms of churches that you go
into on a regular basis for consultation, what are some of the patterns
that you see of these pitfalls that you see that folks, leaders,
churches, even organizations are stumbling into on a regular basis?

Aubrey:Well, on the part of
the
pastor, let me address that, because I have a group called the Malphurs
Group, and I did a lot of consulting with churches all the time. And
one of the things I'm observing in the pastors is a lack of adequate
preparation.

Now seminaries exist to help pastors prepare, and we can only do so
much. But I'm seeing guys out in ministry that are just at a loss as to
what to do. And many of them feel like their sole purpose, and the
expectations of them, is to preach and teach the Bible.

And gosh, certainly we're to do that! What else would we teach and
preach but the Bible?

But a sort of limited to that, and I think it gets back to having a
bigger picture of the leader, we see the leader in terms strictly of
teaching and preaching the Bible.

And again, as important as that is, I think that we need to help people
like this, and laypeople as well, understand that there are other
aspects, important aspects, to leadership.

And so I think we could do a better job there in terms of preparing
them from other perspectives such as the vision casting, understanding
the importance of a mission, understanding that every church has core
values and that if you get at those core values, they tell you
everything about the church and those kinds of issues. And I'm finding
that pastors are not schooled well there.

In terms of church strategies and how they do what they do. How they
can get into the community and begin to win people and reach out into
the communities, these are all things that I'm seeing that are missing
in the preparation of men. Now some get it intuitively, and others
don't have a clue.

Mark:Right. That's
interesting. It
makes you think through, because when you talk about -- if we're just
focusing in on pastor, on the role of a pastor -- you do think of,
"What's the primary role?" It's to preach and teach.

And what you're saying is that you see a lot of guys that are out there
in the field -- they're fine with that, they can craft the sermon,
exposition, research, package it together, it's fine-tuned in terms of
homily, right?

But there are all of these other demands on their life in today's
church that relate to these -- leading a group of people beyond just
the preaching and teaching of the Word.

That's what you're saying; you've got these things that are beyond
that, that they are feeling they're not prepared in those areas.

Aubrey:Well, what I'm hearing
from a
lot of pastors out there who have been to seminary, for example,
especially in the twentieth century, and the sixties, seventies, and
eighties, is that we were taught that all we need to do is preach and
teach the Bible and everything would take care of itself. And a lot of
them are angry about that. They're saying that that's not really true.

Yes, we want to preach and teach the Bible. We want to do a good job of
that, but there is more to it than that. And I was told that was it,
therefore I don't feel adequately prepared.

Now fortunately a lot of these men can go back and there's training
available. From a seminary level, there's the Doctor of Ministry
Program, but there are churches that have pastor conference. And
there's a lot of material out there being written, in terms of books,
articles, and that type of thing. And so a lot of the guys are going to
those for help.

And, then, the Center for Christian Leadership puts on seminars
periodically. Pastors come in and they're trained there as well.

Mark:Just briefly, let's just
talk to
the pastors that are out there, listening to this, going "Yeah; hey;
that's actually my situation right now. I can preach it; that's what
I've been trained in. But all of these other areas..."

What word of encouragement would you give to those guys right now?

Aubrey:Well, mine is very
selfish, and
that is, buy my books. I write a lot in this area. Andy has written in
this area, and I've written in this area. And I have a trilogy on
leadership that I've done. One is Being Leaders, in
which I try to
get at "What is a leader?", trying to define a leader, because
everybody is using the term "leaders", and that's a popular term today
and everybody wants to be called a leader, and my question there is
"What is a leader? What are we talking about?"

We say, in our church, that we want to develop leaders; well, what does
that mean? What does one look like? How do we know whether we've
developed a leader?

And, then, I wrote another book on Building
Leaders. In which we get at
how do we do this, especially in a local church? Then I did a third
book, of that trilogy, which is called Leading Leaders, in
which I
focus specifically on board leadership.

And, interestingly enough, the last book is the best-seller for me.
When I wrote that book, I was thinking that maybe we could help some
people out there, but I didn't think that it would be a big seller. And
it has been selling quite well.

Andy:It's
a great book, because it's
touching a particular need now. As churches grow, the way in which they
are governed needs to be restructured.

Mark:
Let's go to your website, because somebody's out there writing notes
right now, going "Where can I get these resources?"

Aubrey:Well, you could go to
Amazon,
obviously. You just need to remember the name. The publisher is Baker
Book House. And they could go online, and they could tap into Baker,
and they could get these books from Baker.

Mark:
Now, they can also go to your website. Correct?

Aubrey:Yes; but we don't sell
books.
That's just too much; that would be overwhelming. And then there's the
local Christian bookstore, Lifeway, some of these organizations either
they have them or they can order them for you.

Mark:So, in other words let
me put a
larger topic on that, because, in one sense, all of this is talking
about continuing education in many ways. Today's pastors out there and
they're finding themselves in the situation that we're describing right
now there are great resources that are out there to help them in these
areas.

Aubrey:So they don't need to
be angry,
because some of the guys I come across are angry, quite frankly.
They're angry at their seminaries; and I'm saying "Don't be angry.
There's material out there."

Andy:Well,
yes, I think things have
changed. To the pastors out there, I think pastors have one of the most
difficult jobs that exist. And things have changed over the course of
these years. I think, probably, back in the '60s and '70s, you could
build a big church just on preaching. I don't think you can do that
now, because the demands have changed and people expect more.

The more technologically has advanced, the more people expect. And it
generally takes a larger church to do the kind of excellence in
production that people are looking for, because that's what they're
used to. And so it's a much more difficult thing to lead a church today
as a pastor. And leadership, beyond just preaching, is much more of a
requirement today for pastors.

Aubrey:I agree exactly with
Andy. I
don't think he could have articulated it any better. Peter Drucker says
there are three organizations that are most difficult, in his opinion.
And of course, when Peter Drucker speaks, many of us listen. He said
one is being the administrator of a large hospital, another is being
the president of a large university, and the third is being the pastor
of a large church or the pastor of a church.

I think that's interesting, that a man of the stature of a Peter
Drucker, who knows so much about leadership and is respected by
everybody out there, not necessarily Christians, but non-Christian
types, would say that about the church. So a man with that expertise
recognizes the difficulty of leading a church today, which says that
our pastors out there have to be continually educated. And those who
aren't are slipping behind.

Mark:Wow, that's interesting.

Let me go back to this question
of pitfalls and dangers; and then I want to move away from pastors as
leaders, because, we all know, it's not just there, leadership must
permeate the local church.

But are there any more pitfalls that you see? In one sense, if I can
summarize that little topic that we just had, it was the need for
continual preparation, additional training, to be up to speed, to be
prepared for what we need to do in the church. We focused that in on
pastors. But what other pitfalls do you see, in terms of church
leaders, that they face today?

Andy:Well,
I think one of the
largest is the whole idea of change. Change is forced on churches and
on their leadership, just by the changes in the society around us, by
the growth of the church, particular local church, as it grows, it has
to change. And, so, the whole issue of change is a major one.

If change isn't handled well, it becomes a huge pitfall, because any
kind of change takes people out of their comfort zone and there's going
to be some reaction. Even if it's a good change, the pastor thinks it's
a minor change -- we're going to change the time of the service by 15
minutes -- somebody is going to be upset by that, just because we all
have difficulty making change, because we get comfortable where we are.
And so that's one of the major things that pastors have to deal with.

Mark:Don't you think that's a
struggle? When we talk about change that just gets every one of us,
every human being that hears that word just kind of goes "Oh." And,
when you think about change and church, sometimes growth forces change.
And it's not within your control. That's actually one of the great
struggles, isn't it, with change? Is that it's something that's almost
forced upon you. But, when you grow, it demands that you adapt to that
growth.

Aubrey:Isn't
that what the heart of
Christianity is all about? You can use the "change" word, but the
biblical term, rather than "change" is "transformation". But isn't that
at the heart of Christianity? I try to point these out when I work with
these people in the churches. And I say to them "I know it's difficult;
it's hard for you. But keep in mind that this is at the heart of the
gospel, and that it's all about that I be more Christlike this year
than I was last year and that my goal is to be even more so next year."

And, then, we look at what we're doing and how we're doing it, and we
have to ask the question "What changes do we need to make so that this
happens?"

Mark:That is great because,
if you can
take it back to that, then about any external changes, you can say "Why
should we be surprised?" Because, if God wants us to be changing
constantly in our inner life and our relationship to Him, it should
flow out in a congregational if we're all changing inwardly, there
should be a constant change with us, outwardly and collectively, as a
local body of believers.

Aubrey:I like to use an
analysis with
muscle memory. My wife works out at the Landry Center, which is here in
Dallas; and she has a trainer. Every time she works out, he gives her a
different routine. And she always feels it, because she's sore a little
bit later on. But what they have discovered is that muscles, if you
keep exercising them in the same way, they stop responding after a
while; and their term for that is muscle memory'.

I got to thinking about that in terms of Christianity. If we keep doing
the same things over and over in our church, for example, maybe the hot
issue, of course, would be the area of worship, but there are other
ministries as well, then perhaps we grow maybe hardened or callused to
spiritual things. So, by changing these things and maybe doing them a
little bit differently maybe that's a way to revive us and help us in
the transformation process.

Just a thought that we had a while back, rather than look at these
things as changing the way we've always done things around here, maybe
this would be good spiritually to get me out of the rut and to get me
going, by changing and doing something a little bit differently.

Announcer:
This concludes part two of three. For more information about Dallas
Theological Seminary, please visit our website at www.dts.edu.